Injured Brains of Medical Minds: Views From Within – Online Conference

Friday November 15, 2024 (All times are UK times)

(Registration: Please click here. For further details, please email Professor Kapur at n.kapur@ucl.ac.uk)

11.00-11.10am WELCOME, Professor Narinder Kapur

11.10-10.50am – A left parietal tumour: diagnosis and treatment. Professor Cyrus Cooper

11.50am-12.30pm – My journey after a severe traumatic brain injury. Dr Niamh Lowe

12.30-1.10pm – Acute and long-term experience of a subarachnoid haemorrhage. Dr John Scadding

1.10-2.00pm – BREAK [Online display of books written by doctors with brain injury: book cover and Table of Contents]

2.00-2.40pm Recovering from COVID. Professor Alex Mitchell

2.40-3.20pm – Reflections on my right hemisphere stroke and (partial) recovery. Professor Morris Moscovitch

3.20-4.00pm – Living with multiple sclerosis. Mr Ayad Marhoon

4.00-4.40pm – An Alzheimer’s journey: doctor and psychologist-carer perspective. Professor Paul Bebbington & Professor Elizabeth Kuipers

4.40-5.20pm – Recovering from a traumatic brain injury. Dr Jonathan Perera

(A book on the same theme of the conference [Injured Brains of Medical Minds II], front cover shown above, will be published in October 2024. This conference is based on the second edition of the best-selling 1997 first edition of Injured Brains of Medical Minds. The aim of the book and the conference is to provide information that improves patient care, provides practical guidance to healthcare professionals, and offers insights into the workings of the human brain. The book royalties will go to two award schemes I have set up in memory of two people, a doctor and a nurse, who have inspired me in unique ways. The doctor is Dr Karen Woo, a University College London (UCL)-trained doctor, who was murdered by terrorists in 2010 while providing aid in Afghanistan. I was drawn to Karen’s tragedy in part because it resembled how I and other NHS whistleblowers have been treated. Like Karen, we went out of our way to help others, only to be victimised as a result of our efforts. The nurse in question is nurse Amin Abdullah, a dedicated, award-winning nurse who was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice (‘kangaroo court’) when he was unfairly dismissed in 2015. He was also, in part, an NHS whistleblower, drawing attention to patient safety issues. The two award schemes are described in an article I published in the UK Health Service Journal (October, 2022), and also on this website I created, available at www.abetternhs.com)